Tempestuous April. Betty Neels
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placid face framed in pale hair which she wore in an unfashionable and highly becoming bun in the nape of her neck.
‘Aunt Agnes must loathe me,’ she remarked. Aunt Agnes was the Sister on Men’s Medical, she had been there for unnumbered years and made a habit of loathing everyone. ‘It is because I am not English, you think?’
Harriet shook her head. ‘She never likes anyone. I shouldn’t worry anyway, it’s only another two weeks, isn’t it? I shall miss you, Sieske.’
‘Me you too,’ said Sieske with obscure sincerity. She patted her bun with a large capable and very beautiful hand and turned solemn blue eyes on Harriet.
‘Harry, will you not come with me when I go? You have three weeks’ holiday; you could see much of Holland in that time—we should all be so glad; my family think of you as a friend, you know. I tell them many times of my visits to your home—we shall be highly pleased to have you as guest. It is a quiet place where we live, but we have many friends, and the country is pretty too.’ She paused and went on shyly, ‘I should like you to meet Wierd.’ Wierd was her fiancé; after several months of friendship with Sieske, Harriet looked upon him as an old friend, just as the Dutch girl’s family—her mother and father, younger sisters and the older brother who had just qualified as a doctor at Leiden—seemed like old friends too. The Dutch girl had told her so much about them that she felt that she already knew them. It would be delightful to go and stay with Sieske and meet them all—there was a partner too, she remembered; mentioned casually from time to time. Harriet searched her sleep-clogged brain for his name. Friso Eijsinck. She didn’t know much more about him than his name, though. Sieske had mentioned too that he wasn’t married. Harriet felt faintly sympathetic towards him, picturing him as a middle-aged bachelor with a soup-stained waistcoat. She dismissed his vague image from her mind.
‘I’d love to come,’ she said warmly. ‘But are you sure it will be all right with your family?’
Sieske smiled. ‘But of course I am sure. Already they have written with an invitation, which I extend to you. I am most happy, as they will be. We will make plans together for the journey.’ She got up. ‘Now you will sleep and I will write to Moeder.’
‘We’ll arrange it all on my nights off,’ said Harriet sleepily. ‘Get a day off and come home with me—tell Aunt Agnes you have to go to your grandmother’s funeral.’
‘A joke?’ queried Sieske. She had a hand on the door but paused to look back doubtfully at Harriet. But Harriet was already asleep.
Harriet’s family lived in a small west country village some forty miles from the city where she worked. Her father had had a practice there for twenty-five years or more and lived in a roomy rather ramshackle house that had sheltered his large family with ease, and now housed a growing band of grandchildren during school holidays. His eldest son had just qualified in his turn and had already taken his place in the wide-flung practice. It was he who fetched the two girls from hospital a few days later. He owned an elderly Sprite, which was always overloaded with passengers, but both girls were used to travelling in this cramped fashion and packed themselves in without demur. The country looked fresh and green after the rain, the moors rolled away into the distance—Harriet tied a scarf tightly round her hair and drew a deep breath; she was always happiest where the horizon was wide. The village looked cosy, with its thatched and cob walled cottages; the daffodils were out in the doctor’s garden as they shot up the drive and stopped with a tooth-jolting jerk at the front door. The girls scrambled out and ran inside to the comfort of the shabby hall and thence to the big sitting-room at the back of the house, where Mrs Slocombe was waiting with tea and the warm welcome she offered to anyone who set foot inside her home. She listened to the girls’ plans as they ate their way through home-made scones with a great deal of butter and jam, and the large fruit cake Mrs Slocombe had thoughtfully baked against their coming. She refilled their cups and said calmly, ‘How lovely for you, Harry darling. You’ll need a passport and a photo—better go into town tomorrow and get them settled. How will you go?’
Sieske answered, ‘From Harwich. We can go by train from the Hoek and my father will meet us at Leeuwarden.’
Mrs Slocombe replenished the teapot. ‘Travel broadens the mind,’ she observed, and looked at Harriet, immersed in a map. Such a dear child, and so unlike her brothers and sisters with her delicate prettiness and femininity and so gently pliant until one encountered the sturdy core of proud independence and plain common sense beneath it. Mrs Slocombe sighed. It would be nice to see Harriet happily married as her two sisters were. Heaven knew it wasn’t for lack of opportunity, the dear girl was surrounded by men as though they were bees round a honeypot; and she treated all of them as though they were brothers. Perhaps she would meet some nice man in Holland. Mrs Slocombe smiled happily at the thought and gave her mind to the serious business of the right clothes to take.
They spent the rest of that evening making their plans, helped and sometimes hindered by the advice and suggestions proffered by members of the family and their friends as they drifted in and out of the sitting-room. Her brother William, coming in from evening surgery, remarked with all the experience of someone who had been to the Continent of Europe on several occasions, ‘Still at it? Good lord, Harry, anyone would think you were going to the other side of the world instead of the other side of the North Sea.’
His sister remained unmoved by his observations, and merely picked up a small cushion and threw it at his head with the unerring aim of much practice. ‘Beast,’ she said affectionately. ‘But it is the other side of the world to me, isn’t it? I’ve never been outside Britain before, so any part of the world is foreign—just as foreign as the other side of the world—and everyone I meet will be a foreigner.’
This ingenuous remark caused a great deal of merriment. ‘I hope,’ said William, half seriously, ‘that you’ll remember that you are going to be the foreigner.’
‘Harriet will not feel foreign with us,’ said Sieske stoutly. ‘We all speak English—that is, Father and Aede and Friso speak it very well, and Maggina and Taeike are learning it at school—only my mother does not speak it though she does at times understand.’
‘And then there’s you,’ pointed out Harriet. ‘You speak marvellous English.’
Sieske glowed with pleasure. ‘Yes, I think I do, but then you helped me very much; it is not an easy language to learn.’
‘Nor, I gather, is Dutch,’ remarked Dr Slocombe dryly, ‘although it doesn’t sound as though Harry will need to know one word of it.’
‘No, of course she won’t,’ agreed Mrs Slocombe comfortably. She looked across the room at her daughter and thought with maternal satisfaction what a very pretty girl she was. A great deal could happen in three weeks, whatever part of the world one happened to be in.
CHAPTER TWO
THEY TRAVELLED by the night boat from Harwich, and Harriet, whose longest sea trip had been between Penzance and the Scillies, was disagreeably surprised to find the North Sea so spiteful. She lay in her bunk, listening to Sieske’s gentle breathing above her, and wondered if she would be seasick. It was fortunate that she fell asleep while she was still making up her mind about this, and didn’t wake up until the stewardess wakened them with their early morning tea. It was delightful to take turns with Sieske, to peer out of the porthole at the low coast of Holland. It looked as flat as she had always imagined it would be, and lonely as well. An hour later, however, disembarking amidst the cheerful bustle, she reversed her opinion. There seemed to be a great many people, all working very hard and apparently delighted to see the passengers coming off the boat; a larger porter took their luggage and led them to the Customs shed, exchanging pleasantries with Sieske, and thumped down their cases in front of a small rat-faced man who asked them in a surprisingly pleasant voice why they had come and what they had brought with them. Here again Sieske was useful; Harriet found that she did not need to utter a word, although she said ‘Thank you’ politely when she was handed her passport, and was taken aback when the Customs Officer wished her a happy holiday—in quite beautiful English.
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